Sundance In London

I’ve been at Sundance this weekend, not in Utah but at its first festival in London, where we saw ‘Chasing Ice’, an extraordinary documentary about the National Geographic photographer James Balog, who headed to the Arctic in 1995 on a tricky assignment: to capture images that would help tell the story of the Earth’s changing climate. What he came back with, in a remarkable time-lapse experiment that is still going on, and will continue after the film has been released in the autumn, is visual proof of an apocalyptic change to the world’s climate.

As its young director Jeff Orlowski, cinematographer for the Extreme Ice Survey, points out, America is now the world’s most sceptical country about global warming. This is a film that will finally shake the the non-believers to their core.

Having managed to score a VIP pass to the fest I went on to Robert Redford’s party – he was affable, charming and keen to talk about his passions. Rufus and Martha Wainwright sang, and now there’s another bash – a good first year for Sundance, even thought the 02 is not a venue suited to this kind of intimate, alternative festival.

3 comments on “Sundance In London”

There are many people who can’t be convinced of anything they don’t wish to believe no matter how concrete the proof is. It’s still worth trying, though. (And if you’re going to drop names be sure to drop the best. Lucky you to be at that party.)

Mr. Redford *is* fantastically ancient, but wouldn’t it be cool to be able to mention a connection with – hmm, all the examples I can think of are actually dead. So Mr Redford is way out cool and what about the Wainwrights?